ABSTRACT
Business Chinese (BC) instruction was started in the early 1980s when China had just opened its door to the outside world after years of isolation. Over the past few decades, it has steadily developed, and is now solidly established as an important curricular option in the field of teaching Chinese as a second/foreign language. This development, to a large extent, is a proactive response to the practical demand of current and future business professionals who are motivated to enter China-related business areas with applied skills in the Chinese language, and with a better understanding of business Chinese culture. It is also a reflection of the current pedagogical tendency that emphasizes foreign-language development in contextualized instruction. To advance the field both in scope and sophistication, this chapter summarizes its past evolution and current practice, and proposes its future direction. The first part of the chapter provides a historical overview of business Chinese instruction over the past few decades, particularly in the United States and China, with a specific focus on BC textbook development in terms of content coverage and pedagogical strategies. The second part explores the questions of what, how, and to whom that BC courses have been and should be taught, by referring to research studies and language pedagogy. The third part draws on the theoretical frameworks of the case-study method and task-based language teaching and illustrates the general trend in BC education with a teaching plan based on a classic business case ‘KFC’s localization in China’. The chapter concludes with some recommendations for future development.
